A new study looking at the link between declining people’s movement and the spread of coronavirus in 2020 shows that in some countries, the virus spread more quickly when people stayed home. In addition, restricting the mobility of people to some extent seemed, in retrospect, to be better at minimizing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 than extreme mobility restrictions, in many countries.
“More than two years have marked the beginning of the pandemic that changed the lives of many of us in various ways. The current development of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 suggests that this chapter of history entitled COVID-19 could, Hopefully, it will fade in. Its end, however, is still a long way to go. Infectious diseases appear to be a re-emerging threat, “said researchers Mounir Ould Setti and Sylvain Tollis.
Government-imposed blockades and movement restrictions were probably the hallmark of the response to this pandemic. These interventions were found to be invasive in some circumstances and environments. Were blockages and movement restrictions efficient in reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2? Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland analyzed how the movement of people aligned with the daily changes in the number of effective SARS-CoV-2 replication. The number of effective replication reflects the rate of disease spread, as it captures dynamic changes in person-to-person viral transmission. Mobility metrics are based on anonymous location data for Google service users who have location history turned on on their mobile phones. Positions fall into different categories of mobility, including, for example, residential mobility, which indicates that people stay at home. Researchers focused on the pre-vaccination phase and pre-variant concerns of the pandemic from February 15 to December 31, 2020 by analyzing the daily changes in mobility and the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to 125 countries and 52 regions. or states of the United States. .
The analysis identified three groups of countries based on correlation patterns between mobility indicators and the number of effective reproductions of SARS-CoV-2. Group 1 consisted of countries with “normal” correlations, that is, negative correlations between residential mobility and the spread of SARS-CoV-2, for example, the United States, Turkey, and most OECD countries. . Group 2 included countries with “inverted” correlations, referring to positive correlations between residential mobility and the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Group 3 consisted of countries with more complex correlation patterns or “inconclusive” correlations.
In Group 1 countries such as Austria, the longer people spent at home, the less the disease spread, while in Group 2 countries, such as Bolivia, the exact opposite was observed: the longer people spent at home, it was more illness. extending. In addition, in many countries, patterns of correlation between mobility and disease spread showed minimal disease spread at an intermediate level of mobility restriction (“U-shaped” correlations), indicating a optimum level above which restricting the mobility of people could lead to further spread of the disease. In other words, complete blockades could have been counterproductive at certain levels and in some countries.
The authors concluded that a systematic analysis of the correlations between mobility and disease spread at the regional level could help to understand the optimal level of mobility restriction that minimizes the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in this specific region.
Source:
University of Eastern Finland
Magazine reference:
In-depth correlation analysis of the effective reproduction number of SARS-CoV-2 and mobility patterns: three groups of countries. J Prev Med Public Health. 2022; 55 (2): 134-143. Posted online February 10, 2022.